[CAUT] ET vs UET

[Dennis Johnson]

Interesting story..... but aside from all that, scoring 80% or better  
on the exam is really no good measure of ET. Sorry.  Bill Bremmer and  
I did this a long time ago at one of the Conventions, can't remember  
which, but our Victorian Tunings all came in at around 85%. I wish I  
could remember more of the specific details, but this is easily  
confirmed. I enjoyed the read anyway.


Dennis Johnson

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 21, 2010, at 9:19 PM, "Ed  Sutton" <ed440 at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Fred-
>
> Very clever, and at least as valid as Jorgensen's manipulations!
> (You and I have previously spoken about Jorgensen's remarkable logic.)
>
> Three comments:
>
> 1) Does Ellis note whether he is measuring single strings or  
> unisons? If unisons, the slipped note argument is impossible to  
> support.
>
> 2) Ellis knew nothing of inharmonicity, and was measuring  
> fundamentals. We know now that the "sound of equal temperament" is  
> produced by the inharmonic coincident partials. Without some  
> knowledge of the scales of the pianos he measured, how much can be  
> deduced from the data?
>
> 3) The Ellis tunings as noted are better than today's average "floor  
> tuning."
>
> Ed S.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Fred Sturm
> To: caut at ptg.org
> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 9:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET
>
> On Apr 20, 2010, at 9:03 PM, Fred Sturm wrote:
>
>> Are there any balancing pieces of data suggesting tuners  
>> "artistically altering ET" to achieve better results? If anyone  
>> knows of even the slightest hint of such data, please bring it  
>> forward to be added to the mix.
>
>
> As long as I have a head of steam up, I might as well write some  
> more and get it over with <G>. There is, of course, one piece of  
> evidence that the 19th century Victorian Temperament believers  
> continually point to: the "Ellis tunings." In what I wrote above I  
> was looking for documentary evidence (words) to show that tuners (a)  
> had a certain intention that was not ET and (b) had a method, as the  
> missing documentation. But I think it is time that somebody  
> addressed those Ellis tunings head on.
> For any of you who don't know, who aren't familiar with the page  
> (485) in the extraordinary "translator's appendix" to Helmholtz' On  
> the Sensations of Tone, here is some background. Ellis, an amateur  
> scientist in the 19th century tradition    (somebody with money who  
> could afford to spend his time doing such things) did a lot of  
> original research while involved in translating Helmholtz' work. One  
> of many projects was that of measuring pitch, using a set of 105  
> tuning forks    (he called it a tonometer), carefully calibrated 4  
> Hz apart (he describes in some detail the process of tuning them and  
> using them). He claimed to be able to calculate within one cent by  
> counting beats. Truly due diligence would require experimenting to  
> see what the margin of error would be for Ellis' method. One cent  
> plus or minus what? But for now we'll assume that his measurements  
> are exact enough. One thing he did with the forks was to measure  
> temperaments of seven instruments: four pianos and three organs (two  
> reed, one pipe).
> Jorgensen found WT traces in some of the recorded tunings, looking  
> at them with his WT colored glasses. Let me play devil's advocate  
> and look at them with ET colored glasses instead. Let's focus first  
> on the pianos. Three of them were at Broadwood's, supposed to have  
> been tuned by the firm's "best" tuners, the fourth being Ellis'  
> personal piano tuned by his "ordinary" tuner "and let stand unused a  
> fortnight."
> [I have puzzled over that phrase, and have invented a scenario that  
> makes sense to me: Ellis went down to Broadwood to arrange for his  
> experiment, and while he was there, told them "While I'm thinking of  
> it, please send the tuner to my house as well." Then, when his  
> measuring had been done, he thought that as he had his own  
> relatively freshly tuned piano available as well, he might as well  
> measure it too. In any case, this has a ring of truth and  
> probability to it for me].
> Jorgensen found traces of WT in one of the "best" tunings (called #4  
> because its measurements are listed in row four of the table) and in  
> the "Ordinary" tuning. But he found that he needed to make some  
> adjustments to each in order to make usable tunings of them. So he  
> proceeded to "correct what had 'obviously' slipped."  In the  
> "ordinary" tuning, he moved one note by 7.5 cents, and two others by  
> 4 cents each. In "Best #4"  tuning, Jorgensen moved one note 2  
> cents, and another 3 cents.
> I will follow the same procedure, but for Best #4 and Best #5. For  
> B#4 I will move one note 5 cents, another 3 cents. For B#5 I will  
> move one note four cents, one note two cents. (Note that my  
> adjustments are more modest than Jorgensen's). The result for these  
> two adjusted tunings: B#4 now has two 2 cent errors, two 1 cent  
> errors. B#5 now has six 1 cent errors. Each scores 85% on the RPT  
> exam. Not too bad, those guys could tune reasonably well.
> As for the "ordinary" tuning, I notice that most of the notes are  
> flat, some as much as 8 to 11 cents. I suspect the owner of having  
> neglected the instrument (he was not a musician, and it has been  
> said he was "tone deaf"). So many notes being flat leads me to  
> believe the piano needed a major pitch raise. We can hardly take  
> seriously a measurement of such an instrument after two weeks. I  
> will throw out this record as unsuitable.
> This leaves the black sheep, B#3. An amazingly bad tuning, with  
> notes mostly sharp, by as much as 11 cents, and no apparent pattern.  
> Someone had a bad day? I'll speculate again, and hypothesize that  
> the shop foreman, having been told to humor this gentleman  
> scientist, had the tuner take a new piano, with a couple chipping on  
> it, and tune it. That would explain it being that haywire. A  
> credible story at any rate. But, bottom line, this record also needs  
> to be expunged (as Jorgensen also did).
> So we end up with two pianos tuned to a very reasonable ET. That  
> leaves the organs. The pipe organ was another disaster, and I  
> haven't come up with a story (other than the tuner being a  
> drunkard). One of the harmoniums was pretty much spot on, with four  
> one cent errors. It is described as having been very carefully tuned  
> as the standard of pitch for the manufacturer (Blaikley). The other  
> is the famous Moore & Co., which has one deviation of 4 cents, five  
> of 2 cents, and three of 1 cent, all in the flat direction except  
> for one of the 2 cent errors. Now, interestingly enough, if we score  
> this for the PTG tuning test, using the pitch correction number  
> (which is 1.1), the errors mostly fall within the 1 cent parameter  
> (-2 +1.1= -0.9; -1 + 1.1 = 0.1: the -2 errors become -0.9 errors,  
> within the 1 cent tolerance), and we are left with a total of 8  
> points in errors, for a score of 80%. Another RPT is born!
> But I will also note that tuning reed organs is not an exact  
> science, as anyone who has done a little (I have) can attest. You  
> listen, remove the reed, file it a bit (which heats it up), put it  
> back, etc. Unless it is a very particular job, you get it good  
> enough and stop.
> Bottom line, I don't see an iota of evidence of anything but ET in  
> the Ellis data.
> This is overstating my devil's advocate case, but I don't think I am  
> overstating anymore than Jorgensen did in favor of his pet theory.  
> Comments?
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> fssturm at unm.edu
> "I am only interested in music that is better than it can be  
> played." Schnabel
>
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